အနွံ ၂၀
နီၢ်သးကသံၣ်သရၣ်
ယၡါယၤ ၆:၈ – ဒီးယနၢ်ဟူယွၤအကလုၢ်စံးဝဲဒၣ်, ယကမၢလီၤမတၤတဂၤလဲၣ်. ဒီးမ့ၢ်မတၤကလဲၤလၢပဂီၢ်လဲၣ်. ဒီးယစံး, ကွၢ်ကွၢ်, ယၤလီၤ. မၢလီၤယၤတက့ၢ်.
ယဒိၣ်ထီၣ်လၢဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိလၢအသူၣ်ထီၣ်အသးလၢခရံာ်အပူၤ, ဟ့ၣ်လီၤအသးလၢယွၤအတၢ်မၤအပူၤလီၤ. ယဖံယဖု, ယမုၢ်ဂၢ်, ဖါ တံၢ်, ယတမုၣ်တခွါ, ဒီးမိပါဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိ မၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ဒိၣ်ဘၢယတၢ်စူၢ်တၢ်နာ်စးထီၣ်ဖဲယသးစၢ်အခါလီၤ. ယသးပှၢ်ထီၣ်ဒီးယတၢ်နာ်ယွၤအံၤဒိၣ်ထီၣ်အါထီၣ်ဝဲပှီၢ်ပှီၢ်ဒီး ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢယအိၣ်ဘူးအါထီၣ်ဒီးယွၤလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယတဆိက မိၣ်နီတဘျီလၢယကစၢ်ဒၣ်ယဲယကကဲထီၣ်ပှၤမၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤဘၣ်. အါစုအါဘျီယွၤပျဲပကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်တၢ်ဒ်သိးကသိၣ်လိပှၤ, ဒီး ဒ်သိးပကဟ့ၣ်ခီဟ့ၣ်နီၤလီၤသးသကိးကိးအဂီၢ်လီၤ. ယအဲၣ်ဒိး ဟ့ၣ်ခီဟ့ၣ်နီၤတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဖိလၢယဘၣ်ဂုာ်ကျဲးစၢးထဲးဂံၢ်ထဲးဘါဒီးဘၣ် ကတိၤတၢ်လၢကစၢ်ယွၤအဘျီဘျီအဂ့ၢ်လၢ အမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ‘‘ယွၤအတၢ်ကိး’’ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယဖိသၣ်အခါယတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်ကွၢ်စိမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ယကကဲ ထီၣ်ဘၣ်ကသံၣ်သရၣ်လီၤ. ယသးဆူၣ်သးစဲလၢ ယကမၤစၢၤကဟုကယာ် ပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအတၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်တအိၣ်အါအါ ဘၣ်ဃး ဒီး အတၢ်အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ အတၢ်အိၣ်မုာ်အိၣ်ပၢၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယဃုမၤတ့ၢ်တၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိအါမးဘၣ်ဃးဒီးတၢ်အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ ဖဲ Bay Area, California တဘျုးနံၣ်လီၤ. ယဒိးန့ၢ်ဘၣ် Bachelor degree, မၤဝံၤကတီၤဆိကသံၣ်သရၣ်အတၢ်မၤလိ, ဟံးန့ၢ် MCAT တၢ်ဒိးစဲးလၢအကီအခဲသၢဘျီ, မၤစၢၤတၢ်မုာ်သးမၤကလီ, သိၣ်လိတၢ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ်, ထုးထီၣ်ရၤလီၤလံာ်လဲၢ်, န့ၢ်ဘၣ် တၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤခိၣ်ဖးတဖၣ် – ခိၣ်နၢ်လၢအဂုၢ်ထီၣ်ပသီထီၣ်လၢဘၣ်တၢ်ဟ့ၣ်အီၤလၢ (Emerging Leader award from Washington, DC), ဒီး (Jefferson award) တဖၣ်, ဒီးခိၣ်ဖးအဂၤ, ဒီးလံာ်အုၣ်သးလၢယဂီၢ်လၢအဂ့ၤကတၢၢ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. ယဒိး န့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်လၢပှၤကညီကြၢးအိၣ်ဒီးအီၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒီးယနာ်သပှၢ်တၢၢ်လၢတၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤမ့ၢ်ဝဲကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်သုးတၢ်ကျဲၤ တၢ်ဘၣ်အသးလၢယကြၢးမၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယဆိကမိၣ်ဒီးသုးကျဲၤတၢ်န့ၣ်မ့ၢ်ဝဲဒၣ်ယကလဲၤထီၣ်ကသံၣ်သရၣ်အတၢ်မၤလိန့ၣ်လီၤ.
ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်ကိးလၢယဂီၢ်လၢအမ့ၢ်ကျဲအဂၤတဘိဒ် ကတိၤဒိ ၁၆:၉, စံးဝဲ ‘‘ပှၤကညီအသးကူၣ်ဝဲအကျဲလီၤ. မ့မ့ၢ်ယွၤဆှၢ အထွဲတၢ်လီၤ’’ န့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢခံန့ၣ်ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်ကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်ကိးခီဖျိယကမ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢအမၤစၢၤပှၤဂၤလၢနီၢ်သးတကပၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ကိးတခါအံၤတမ့ၢ်ဟဲဝဲသတူာ်ကလာ်ဘၣ်. ဟဲထဲတဆီဘၣ်တဆီစးထီၣ်လၢယမၤစၢၤ ပှၤဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲတဖၣ်လၢယတၢ်အိၣ် ဖှိၣ်အပူၤ ၁၂နံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤလီၤ. ကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်အံၤလီၤကမၢကမၣ်ဝဲလီၤ. ယနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်ကိးစံးဝဲ ‘‘ယကဆှၢ လီၤမတၤတဂၤလဲၣ်’’ ဖဲယဖိဒိၣ်ခွါလွံၢ်နံၣ်ဖိတဂၤ အတၢ်ဖျိထီၣ် ကတီၤဆိကၠိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယစံးဆၢက့ၤယွၤလၢ ‘‘ယအိၣ်ဖဲအံၤလီၤ. ဆှၢလီၤယၤတက့ၢ်.’’ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယဖိဒိၣ်ထီၣ်အကၠိမ့ၢ်ပှၤခရံာ်ဖိအကၠိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲတၢ်ဖျိထီၣ်ကၠိအမူးန့ၣ်ဖိသၣ်တဂၤဘၣ်တဂၤဟဲထီၣ် ဆူပျဲၢ်စီၤခိၣ်, ဒီးစံးဘၣ်ဝဲအတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်ကွၢ်စိ ဖဲအဒိၣ်ထီၣ်အခါအဲၣ်ဒိးမၤဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖိသၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်အဲၣ်ဒိးကဲထီၣ်ကသံၣ်သရၣ်, ပၢၤကီၢ်ခိၣ်, ပဒိၣ်ပပှၢ်ဖးဒိၣ်, ဒီးပှၤသ့ပှၤဘၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. ထဲတဂၤဖိမးတစံးဝဲလၢသါအဲၣ်ဒိးကဲထီၣ်ပှၤမၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤဘၣ်. ယမဲာ် ထံယွၤလီၤဝဲလၢကစၢ်ယွၤအဂီၢ်လီၤ. ယသးသ့ၣ်ဖးဒီးယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လီၤတံၢ်လီၤဆဲးလၢယတမ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢအကြၢးအဘၣ်ဒီးအလၢပှဲၤ လၢကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်မၤဘၣ်. ယတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိအံၤဒုးမၤလီၤတံၢ်ယၤလၢယဘၣ်တၢ်ကိးယၤဒ်ပပါစံးဝဲ ‘‘နီၢ်သးအကသံၣ်သရၣ်’’ အသိးန့ၣ်လီၤ.
သရၣ်မုၣ်ကွံသ့ၣ်လၣ်စ့
မဲၣ်န်ထံကၣ်, ခဲၣ်လဖိနယါကီၢ်စဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်မုၣ်ကွံသ့ၣ်လၣ်စ့သဂၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢယွၤလီၤဂာ်ဒ်ဝံယၡါယၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံယၡါယၤအတၢ်စံးဆၢမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဃ့လၢအအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သူၣ်ဆူၣ်သးဂဲၤလၢကန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ် လၢအမ့ၢ်ပှၤတဂၤလၢယွၤကမၢလီၤ တချုးသ့ၣ်ညါဝဲတၢ်ကမၢလီၤအီၤလၢမနုၤ အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်စံးဆၢဂ့ၤဒိၣ်မးဆူယွၤအတၢ်ကိးန့ၣ်လီၤ. သရၣ်မုၣ်ကွံသ့ၣ်လၣ်စ့ အတၢ်သဂၢၢ်လိာ်သးဒီးယွၤ ဆီတလဲတမ့ၢ် ထဲအတၢ်ကိးဘၣ်, သိၣ်လိအီၤစ့ၢ်ကီးလၢကပာ်စဲထီဃာ်အမဲာ်ချံဆူကစၢ်ခရံာ်အလိၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တနံၤအံၤ, အဝဲမၤယွၤအတၢ်လၢ တၢ်ဆီၣ်လီၤသးပူၤ ဒ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ် ဒီး တၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်ဒီးသုးဖိအတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ် ဒီးတမ့ၢ်ကသံၣ်သရၣ်ဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲအဝဲ ထံၣ်ဘၣ်ပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ဆါ, အသးသဘံၣ်ဘူၣ်, အသးဟးဂီၤ, အပျံၤတၢ်, အတၢ်အိၣ်သးတလီၤတံၢ်လီၤဆဲး, ဒီး အလိၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်စံးဆၢသပှၢ်ပှၢ်အခါ, တၢ်ဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်အီၤလၢအဝဲအတၢ်စံးဆၢယွၤမ့ၢ်တၢ်စံးဆၢဟဲလၢသူၣ်လၢသးဒီဖျၢၣ် သနာ်က့ တမ့ၢ်တၢ်အညီလၢအကဲဝဲနီၢ်သးကသံၣ်သရၣ်, လၢအစိာ်ထီၣ်ခရံာ်တၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်အလီဆှိဆူဟီခိၣ်လၢ အလီၤမၢ်အံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.
မုၢ်မဆါတနံၤအံၤတၢ်မနုၤတြီဆၢနၤလၢ နကနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်ကိးနၤလဲၣ်. နကဲနဲ နီၢ်သးကသံၣ်သရၣ် လၢပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢ နသဂၢၢ်ဘၣ်ကိးနံၤကသ့ဒ်လဲၣ်. နကအိၣ်မူကြၢးဘၣ်ဒီးယွၤအတၢ်ကိးနၤလၢယွၤအလၤကပီၤအဂီၢ်ကသ့ဒ်လဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤမၤစၢၤဘၣ်နဖိအံၤဒ်သိးကတီဒီးမူဒါလၢနဟ့ၣ်လီၤအီၤ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ပှၤအိၣ်လၢ တၢ်လီၢ်ကိးပူၤလိၣ်ဘၣ်ကစၢ်ခရံာ်လီၤ. ယဃ့လၢ နဖိအံၤကမ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်ပီးတၢ်လီလၢ ယွၤသူအီၤဒ်သိးကနဲၣ်ဘၣ်ဝဲပှၤဆူယွၤအဘျုး အဖှိၣ်လၢအုၣ်က့ၤခီၣ်က့ၤတၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. စပံးလီၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ်ပှၤမၤတၢ်ဖိအါမး လီၤ. ယွၤဧၢ, ဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်နဖိအံၤလၢဝံယၡါယၤအသး ဒီး အတၢ်သူၣ်ဆူၣ်သးဂဲၤ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. အဝဲကအိၣ်ပှဲၤဒီးတၢ်ယူးယီၣ်ကမၢကမၣ်လၢ နမဲာ်ညါ, ဒီး ကစံၣ်ဒီး တူၢ်လိာ်တၢ်တမံၤလၢ်လၢ်လၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးမၢအမၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. အအံၤမ့ၢ်နဖိလီၤ. မၢလီၤအီၤတနံၤအံၤတက့ၢ်. မၢလီၤအီၤဒ်သိးကရၤလီၤဘၣ်ဝဲ နလၤကပီၤ, နတၢ်သးကညီၤ, နတၢ်အဲၣ်, ဒီး နတၢ်သးခုကစီၣ် လၢအတၢ်မၤလီၢ်, တၢ်တဝၢ, တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်, ကၠိ, ဟံၣ်, ဒီး ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အပူၤအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ကိးမုၢ်နံၤ မ်ပဝဲကိးဂၤ ကစံးဆၢ, ‘‘ယၤလီၤ. မၢလီၤယၤတက့ၢ်.’’ လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 20
A SPIRITUAL DOCTOR
Isaiah 6:8 “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (NIV)
I was raised as a devoted Christian in a home dedicated to serving God. My whole family consists of ministers which influenced my strong faith at an early age. As I get older, my faith continues to grow and I feel closer to Him. However, I never thought or wanted to be a minister myself. God often allows events in our life to teach us life lessons that must be shared with others. There was one thing I struggled with, had a lot of conversations with the Lord, and I would like to share it with you. It was my special “calling.” Since I was a little girl, my dream was to become a doctor. My passion was always to help underserved populations through providing services and empowering patients to take care of their health and well-being. I worked closely with medically underserved populations as an intern, health specialist, medical assistant, and health navigator in Bay Area, CA, for several years. I got my Bachelor degree, finished my pre-med, took academically rigorous MCAT for three times, had extracurricular activities (internship and volunteer experiences, conference/training publications), received many awards/honors (i.e. Emerging Leader award from Washington, DC and Jefferson award, and many other local awards), and got wonderful recommendation letters. I had almost everything by human standard. I was so sure that that’s what God wanted me to do, and I would go to medical school. I planned and thought it all out.
However, God had a different calling for me. Like the scripture says in Proverbs 16:9, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” Later in life, I felt God’s call to serve Him by providing spiritual and emotional care as a minister and a chaplain. This calling did not come suddenly, but gradually as I helped the refugee community in healthcare settings and during my 12 years of continuous ministries at my home church. Sometimes, God shows up in a very mysterious way. I heard the voice of the Lord saying “Whom shall I send? Who will go for them?” I heard it at my then four-year-old nephew’s preschool graduation, I responded to God by saying, “Here I am, send me.” My nephew’s preschool was a Christian school. During the ceremony, each kid came up on the stage and shared what they wanted to become when they grew up. Most of their dreams were to become a doctor, a police officer, a vet, a politician, and so on. None of them said I wanted to be a minister to serve God. For some reason, I teared up for Jesus, felt broken and becasme deeply aware of my unworthiness and inadequacy to serve Him. This experience affirmed my call, as my dad said, “A spiritual doctor.”
Pastor Kwee Thay Lar Say
Manteca, California
REFLECT
Chaplain Kwee Thay Lar Say encounters with the living God was similar to Isaiah’s. Isaiah’s response was an enthusiastic plea to have that privilege — to be the one that God would send even before he knew for what he was being sent. What an amazing response to God’s call! Chaplain Kwee’s encounter with the living God not only changed her calling but also had taught her to keep her eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, she is humbly serving her gracious God as a pastor and a chaplain instead of a medical doctor. When she encounters people who are hurting, wounded, confused, depressed, fearful, full of uncertainty, and desperate for answers, she is reminded of heartfelt response although it wasn’t an easy response to the Lord to be “a spiritual doctor,” who carries the torch of Christ Gospel to this dying world.
Today, what prevents you from hearing or following God’s calling for you?
How can you serve as a “spiritual doctor” to those you meet each day in your daily lives?
How can you live a life worthy of your calling today for the glory of God?
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear gracious God, bless your children reading today’s devotional journal. Lord, please help them to be faithful in the work You have given them to do. People everywhere need Jesus. I pray that they will be a vessel that God uses to volunteer for the sake of pointing people to the saving grace of Christ. The vineyard is in desperate need of workers. Lord, give your children the heart and willingness of Isaiah, to be filled with awe in your presence, and to jump at the chance to serve you in whatever you call them to. Here your child is, send him/her today. Send and use them today however you want for the spread of your glory and your mercy, love and share the gospel in their workplaces, communities, churches, schools, homes, and in the world. May each of us say each day, “Here I am! Send me.” I pray this in Jesus’ Name, Amen!